The European Commission has concluded that Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has broken competition rules in the European Union by abusing a dominant position and has asked for explanations. The department headed by Magrethe Vestager shared the allegation on Monday: “She fears the company is imposing unfair trading conditions on competitors”. The company must now submit allegations to refute the Brussels accusation.
Meta’s investigation was announced a year and a half ago over suspicions that the company that Mark Zuckerberg runs is manipulating the market in its favor and violating competition rules in the single market. Around 18 months later, he confirmed his intuition. “Meta combines its online classifieds service, Facebook Marketplace, with its dominant personal social network, Facebook. This means that Facebook users automatically have access to Facebook Marketplace whether they want it or not. The Commission fears that Facebook Marketplace’s competitors could be foreclosed as the link gives Facebook Marketplace a significant sales advantage that competitors cannot match.
This first allegation is supplemented by another, which is also directed against the competing companies: “Meta unilaterally imposes unfair terms and conditions on competing online classifieds services that advertise on Facebook or Instagram. […] Such conditions weigh on competitors and only benefit Facebook Marketplace.”
With these conclusions, the head of EU competition, Vice-President Vestager, has indicated that her department’s preliminary view is that “Facebook users have no choice but to access Facebook Marketplace”.
Not only Meta had to face such accusations. Amazon, the great e-commerce giant, also faces similar scrutiny because it prefers its products based on data from its competitors: it recognizes the best-seller on its platform and accumulates its own inventory. That filing may be nearing completion, as the Financial Times newspaper reported a few weeks ago that the community executive and the company run by Jeff Bezos were finalizing an agreement.
Should the investigations against Meta finally end in a sanction, the company from Palo Alto (California) will join a list in which the large American technology groups play a leading role, above all Alphabet-Google. Among the top five fines imposed by the European Union for violating competition rules, this company appears three times for a total of 7,250 million euros. Apple also has ongoing investigations into abuse of a dominant position, in this case for its payment service.
From now on, the bodies examined will be given the deadline to present their allegations in writing and verbally. Should the EU antitrust authority still find Meta guilty, for which there is no deadline, the technology company faces a fine of up to 10% of its global turnover (around 45,000 million euros in 2021). .
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